1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of data processing and, more particularly, to a method of processing data associated with businesses.
2. Description of the Related Art
To be successful, businesses need to make informed decisions. In risk management, businesses need to understand and manage total risk exposure. They need to identify and aggressively collect on high-risk accounts. In addition, they need to approve or grant credit quickly and consistently. In sales and marketing, businesses need to determine the most profitable customers and prospects to target, as well as incremental opportunity in an existing customer base. In supply management, businesses need to understand the total amount being spent with suppliers to negotiate better. They also need to uncover risks and dependencies on suppliers to reduce exposure to supplier failure.
The success of these business decisions depends largely on the quality of the information behind them. Quality is determined by whether the information is accurate, complete, timely, and consistent. With thousands of sources of data available, it is a challenge to determine which is the quality information a business should rely on to make decisions. This is particularly true when businesses change so frequently. In the next thirty minutes, 120 businesses addresses will change, 75 business telephone numbers will change or be disconnected, 30 new businesses will open their doors, 20 chief executive officers (CEOs) will leave their jobs, 15 companies will change their names, and 10 businesses will close.
Conventional methods of providing business data are incomplete. Some providers collect incomplete data, fail to completely match entities, have incomplete numbering systems that recycle numbers, fail to provide corporate family information or provide incomplete corporate family information, and merely provide incomplete value-added predictive data. It is an object of the present invention to provide more complete and accurate business data. This includes complete and accurate data collection, entity matching, identification number assignment, corporate linkage, and predictive indicators. This completeness and accuracy produces high quality business information that businesses trust and depend on for making business decisions.